Staging the tour-location for groups: Event-space and perception

Free course excerpt

When staging a tour-location, we use several techniques, deriving from different research- and practice-areas. When staging a tour-location- regardless of the research and theoretical backgrounds used, always remember that you are part of the group, room and space aswell. If it doesn’t feel right to you, you might very well be right. The trick then, is to find out what exactly is “wrong” and what to do about it.

This lesson excerpt is free to download below!

The group versus the interior

You can pre-stage the location, to work in your advantage. Before you arrive with the group, make sure you have set everything up and discussed this with the pub owner.

Instead of asking the owners permission on several small actions, ask them if it’s alright to “set the location”. It prevents having to explain every detail. The theoretical part of this is abstract and not everyones cup of tea, so take your time.

Using some basics of Grouping in Gestalt, Ï will show some examples of use in practice.

Join the locals

How do the participants know who are locals and who aren’t? Most of them will want to meet locals and be part of them, for the duration of the tour and foreseeable period of time afterwards.

There are many semiotic features that define who is part of which group, how they comunicate with eachother and other groups. Meaning, inclusion, exclusion- basically all communication that we perceive and can process, is transfered by “language” both parties can understand and can communicate about on meta level, using the modalities they know but also the modalities they know, the other “party” will understand and and communicate about.
There is much, much, much more going on than that! There are forms of communication going, that not yet have means of both sending and receiving from one set to an other. There simply is no language to describe the unknown. This produces an alternative form of sending and receiving that is formed by proximity and the amount of events wherein different groups meet eachother within a certain space. This is called emergent effects, as opposed to stereotypical effects.

Using “similarity” and “closure” as metaphors, when arriving at the pub the “opening-scene” of the tour-location, can be made to invite the participants to join a setting that has an opening, just for them. An oval table with a few locals sitting on just one side of it, looks inviting to join (using “closure” as visual metaphor) and the tour-participants can easily feel welcomed by either the locals themselves or the familiarity of the tourguide with the locality itself. Use your position to link the physical local to the tour participants.

Open shape, but closed-off and uninviting, because of use of different materialities (wood, vs cushions), shape and grouping

In the bar-picture below, the “localness” is emphasised by the broken circle of locals on bar-stools. The broken space can be very inviting to join them but can also be potentially threatening. In this case, the empty space is used as service-space (vitrine), which would be less inviting for this particular purpose.

A table is a much more inviting environment for the tour participants to join the locals. Hospitality is conveyed and experienced through the righ modalities: texture, materiality of space, light, heat, brightness, scent, atmoshpere, a turntaking of reciprical behaviours, food and drink!

Sitting on one side of the table (staged by you as tour director), the other side seems welcoming and intices to join. Whatever you do, do not place a “reserved” sign on the table.

In the picture below, you see 2 examples. One of them is configured as “closed”, the other one is “open.”

Mediating objects

In other content (posts, blogs, lectures and articles) I have written about mediation, mediating qualities of objects and spaces. Make sure the participants recognise typically local objects or habits and behaviour typical for local or national life, without trying to be too spefic. It is better to let the participants weave threads together and arrive to conclusions themselves. It enriches the experience and gives them a sense of insight.

In the stillframe below, we see a drinking vessel, typical for Valencian culture. The tour participants are asked to engage in drinking from the vessel (there’s a trick to it; I’ve tried it), but later on in the evening. In this case the tour is very clearly about tapas and the guided consumption of it. People are less engaged with local culture in a participatory manner, but very much consume the experience.

The cityguide in this example is Suzy Anon y Garcia– a tourguide from Valencia I know personally and can recommend her to everyone! She’s a foodie if ever I met one and knows everything there is to know about food and Valencian food in particular!

Carrying ‘m home

In grannies cupboard, lies an old pen with mountainview and a fluid, in which a little ship goes up and down if you hold the pen upside down. The pen never really worked properly and the fluid has leaked away. Nevertheless, it was a souvenir and we keep it. They have a special place in our house, minds and memories. They transfer meanings, but only through its owner.

You could say, the souvenir was already purchased when we were still at home. The souvenir relates to our bodies, our homes, the construction of our sense of self and place.

Souvenirs transfer meaning and culture, by means of their material qualities. A wooden carving, made from a regional kind of wood, gives meaning through the work involved making it, the details made by the craftsman, the time it took to make it, the place where you bought the thing, the context wherein you bought it, its size, its weight, its grainy structure. They are all coupled to its meaning, at the very moment it changed hands.

The relationship between an object and its owner, is almost a magical one, according to many anthropologists and scholars. The object is imbrued with meaning, it has the power to ‘communicate’ and it tangibly occupies a space, whilst symbolising another symbolically- temporal and geographical.

Mass production

Even mass-produced plastic rubbish, implicitely carries these qualities, although there is a significant loss in containing and transferring meaning, due to lack of forementioned qualities.

The souvenir has meaningful qualities and traits, because of its connection to the owner. Without a narrative, the souvenir is worthless. In mass production there has been given no meaning to the product by means of material qualities. On the contrary, souvenirs bought in mass tourism, exemplifies the very thing people want to escape from: work. (Benson)

Even the simplest mass produced plastic souvenirs, can carry meaning. And they do, ofcourse. However, the constructed narrativeof its owner survives this process of exchange, minus many many meaningful material qualities. The remaining narrative, makes the purchased souvenir a ‘ mediating object.’ Something that is amplified by its later place within the house and household, within objects that make you you, but as an outsider’s experience and perception of the experience of a site. (Benson)

Home and the souvenir

Whilst travelling, the souvenir you’re going to buy, already has a connection to you and your home. There’s a bond between your body, the ‘self’ and the construction of identity, primarily because your home is the main place where people create their reality and sense of self, in everyday life. Within this personal museum, you move in the presence of familiar objects ad images- constructing, annotating and forming your personality, your ways of meaning making and transference and ways of telling both yourself and the world, what you find important and what not. Souvenirs usually embody the same characteristics. To name a simple example in the context of materiality: a wooden carving has to fit the salon table.

We inscribe the perception of home on particular places and locations, without necessarily having to be there. Potentially we have the capacity to create our own notion of home. Within post-modern society the sense of place and perceptions of home is both highly standardised and commodified, aswell as constructed by means of tourism. Even the sense of authenticity, embodied by artefacts, souvenirs and totems, is often a constructed one. Some thrive on the sense of nostalgia, not all of them, as the sense of nostalgia is experienced by the tourist, not particularly the locale itself.

Example from forum on the relationship souvenir/ownership

My parents’ souvenir spoons; let me show you them. January 23, 2010 I have inherited a collection of souvenir spoons. Can you suggest funky or creative ways to display these? They came with the standard souvenir spoon display board, which I don’t care for. For what it is worth, I have not visited all of the places that these spoons were obtained, though I respect the fact that my parents chose to go to these places and obviously had nice memories of these trips. posted by Morrigan

Commercialised, mass produced souvenirs, can represent a manufactured notion of nostalgia, building on the desire of constructing a shared narrative. This does still not mean, the bought souvenirs are without meaning! Physical contact with objects collected during travels (like souvenirs), is more important for travellers telling stories, than visual representations (Bationo). Other research shows that people do prefer to recollect memories by using souvenirs rather than photo’s. However among elderly people using objects for reminiscing, 42% of the cases preferred the photograph for “stirring recollections” (Sherman).

In conclusion

In a way it could be argued, the commercialised rhythm, velocity and repetitiveness with which the tourist locations are flooded, provide new opportunities to convey clear and present images on current countries, current culture and local life- as an answer to “master narratives” and somewhat colonial ways of looking at other countries and cultures. Were it not that commercial travel highly manipulates our view and perception of places. Grasping- in essence -to that what communicates culture in a way nothing else can: through souvenirs and objects, carried and annotated by you!

And neither are you

It takes understanding your customer, their movement and expectations, but also the pacing of their day and time and their perception of “homeness” . In that respect, the locations travelled through some of the locative games, are consumption zones, without semiotic narratives or meaning, other than the often very real sense of fun, associated with it. However not as authentic.

Creating Homeness with more than optional thrillseeking

Due to several factors such as better infrastructure and public transport and commodification of rural difficult to reach areas- formerly the realm of the adventure-backpacker, the thrill and exitement for the actual act of traveling, has decreased. At the same time, the desire to engage in other specifically designed activities within a smaller scale, has increased greatly. A sense of authenticity is still very important.

Backpackers want to feel the real atmosphere of the destination and therefore do not fit within the the package arrangements, often intended for mass tourism.

Remember, there is a difference between backpackers, travellers and tourists. I will go into these differences some other time, but the point is: they all share the same infrastructure. Different needs, wants and expectations.

Travel and the body

The mind does not only exists within the bounderies of our skulls. We experience the world and the act of travel through our bodies aswell. Mediated by, guided by, formed and transformed by the landscape and our bodies.

Through walking, we are allowed to know the landscape in all its features. Step-rhythm generates thought rhythm. The path through the landscape activates a path of thought.

A new thought often looks like an old landscape feature, as if thinking were travelling» (Solnit, 2000). There is a vast body of knowledge on the relationships between travel, the body and mind and landscapes. It is quite impossible to create a singular structure within the boundaries of this blog (and my expertise). However, a few founded and grounded topics, I shal not withhold from you.

A lived experience

Backpackers use their body as an instrument of passage, not just movement. The act of leaving for a new destination and arriving there, through travel, is as much meaningful to his sense of selfness, as is the pre-travel dream and its representations. There is a shift in research towards the multisensory experience and corporeal engagement. Big hotel chains have yet to embrace this, which gives them an immense backward position. Embracing new and less common insights, does not make everything else obsolete! As experience designer and concepter, I find this highly remarkable and ignorant. Furthermore is the tourist not just gazed upon as a mere consumer, but approached from a wide variety of scientific research.

As a professional, I find this highly remarkable and ignorant.

The bodily sensation, corporeal experience has gained in interest and popularity, also by professionals such as myself. I use all manner of research from different scientific sources, to be able to do my work as best I can. The deliverables usually, are written in the language of the client and stakeholders. I can acknowledge the fact that a more holistic approach in the deliverable, usually conjures up more questions than can be answered in a few oneliners.

Tourism research is very much focussed on the visual. By commodification of image culture, place branding, city marketing, placeboosting, this was very much about politics of representation.

To be perceptive of the landscape, is more than just travelling in it. The landscape has given us- since the time ot the hunter-gatherers -ways to make meaning and to remember. To remember more than just the individual life and lifespan. To cite Ingold:

‘‘To perceive the landscape is to carry out an act of remembrance, and remembering is not so much a matter of calling up an internal image, stored in the mind, as of engaging perceptually with an environment that is itself pregnant with the past.’’

Landscape, travel, mind and body are very much culturally linked. Vast distances to travel between families for instance, will produce a totally different sense of space and distance, aswell as time. Tourism has both spatial and temporal dimensions. After the journey people describe themselves as being wiser and emotionally and more socially adept. A very noticeable characteristic of backpacking narratives is the way they describe deep and profound personal changes, after having made the trip.

The experience of mobility is conditioned and co-produced through interaction and engagement (willingly, non-willingly, accidental, subconsciously) with ordinary structures, shapes and materials, such as a folded newspaper, a laptop, mobile phone. Not to mention the circulation of affects such as stress, being tired, irritated etc. They all play roles in the creation of a particular travel atmosphere.

Although backpackers seek to connect with different cultures and localities, they have the tendency to very easily become part of an isolated and self-contained community of travellers, with little to no local connections. The backpacker enclaves have become important surroundings for exchange. The provide an important source of information and information-exchange.

The backpacking sociability and presence as ” a community on the road” was in the past a fleeting and short-term sight, as a perceivable community. Now, in the age of social media, not only the tourist-geography but also the construction and location of social bubbles and hubs, are more visible and traceable.

As traveller by train or bus, your perception of time, travel time and transit, is part of a delicate interaction-sequence and performative structure that defines mobility; Complex socio-technical systems, that afford, restrict or prevent particular mobile practices. Refer to Wilsons Affordance theory here.

These can be seen as the design-structure of your mode of transport. This design-structure includes not only the above and you- it is comprised of different materialities. Textures, movement, hardness, colour etc.

Tourism research is very much focussed on the visual. By commodification of image culture, place branding, city marketing, placeboosting, this was very much about politics of representation.

The Nature of Cities

To be perceptive of the landscape, is more than just travelling in it. The landscape has given us- since the time ot the hunter-gatherers -ways to make meaning and to remember. To remember more than just the individual life and lifespan. To cite Ingold:

‘‘To perceive the landscape is to carry out an act of remembrance, and remembering is not so much a matter of calling up an internal image, stored in the mind, as of engaging perceptually with an environment that is itself pregnant with the past.’’

Gastronomic events?

The consumers’ attention has to be captured by the development of experiences. When you’re planning something special on the gastronomic level, make sure your guests actively participate in the setting you have staged for them. They can be employed to create a sense of community among your guests. Very well suited for lobby-events!

Meals are in essence sequential: breakfast, lunch, dinner and in-between, which provides a natural setting for the framing of a gastronomic event.

Make surprise gastronomic experiences a key- service for your hostel but make it feel like a random and kind event.

Ask guests to provide local recipes for food and drink and invite them into the kitchen.

Why not take it a step furter? Invite guests to cook for other guests. Include a budget and give them a chance to invite other people to their dinner.

Invite local producers into your hotel.

Buy from them for the hostel kitchen and stock.

Have them come over for tastings with guests.

Transform your hostel to a social being-space!

In hostels, guests often use a communal kitchen. Eating with eachother is usually a random act- depending on who is near at that time. Guests are both producers and consumers of the experience. Backpackers are used to the creative and open atmosphere in hostels, aswell as the cheap fees. However, there is a distinct danger that they will primarily see your hostel as being a cool place to stay, but not to participate in! Participation in the creation of experience.

there is a distinct danger that they will primarily see your hostel as being a cool place to stay, but not to participate in

Do your guests cook for themselves in a communal kitchen?

Reaching the guest with big and rich, full-on experiences, engaging all the senses, is getting somewhat out of fashion. That is to say: we still make them, but tourists increasingly want more “real” and local experiences, lived through the locality and negotiating spaces. Staging such allround and full-on experiences, still apply within settings such as winetasting or a guided visit to the local brewery. You could compare it to the loss of producer generated flow in television. The audience can no longer be captivated on their terms, for the duration of the program (due to commercial breaks), but the viewer can experience a fuller and broader event, within a wider spatial setting. Food is good for tourism experiences as it is often a short detour or entrance to local culture. It brings locals and tourists together.in a shared cultural experience.

Anyone interested in placemaking and the more anthropological side of tourism will know that food bonds us with place, identity and culture. A very important role to play, considering the growth of the ‘network society’.

Misconception: Gastronomic events are not for small hostels and they are a bit elitist.

Definitely untrue. This perception of elitist and toffeenosed events. is largely due to the producers of consumer- and tourist-experiences- FOR the consumer -who aimed at the more discerning connaisseur. Nowadays, eating and drinking is very much a broadly accepted and enacted activity. Not in the last place because of new collaboration methods and modes of co-producing experiences. On the consumption side of things, the ‘foodies’ don’t really go for the haute cuisine anymore. Nevertheless, one has to remember that food and gastronomy is highly bound by culture, which automatically creates a sense of both inclusion and exclusion.
Democratising both food and travel has led to a huge amount of food travel websites. Still, they do look or more rare and foreign foods, prefably not easily accessable by the large public, therewith establishing and maintaining there foodie lifestyle plus being able to spread it among other groups.

Our Community Kickstart program is an in-depth workshop-format that truly prepares your community for success in food and drink tourism.

When does an experience become a story?

Anyone travelling loves to tell stories. During travel, after the journey, whenever resting around a campfire. But these stories are more connected than you might think, although they are told at different points and places within the travel experience, using different voices and stances. Together they form a typical narrative. Pre-tour narratives are carried throughout the journey, shaping and scripting the journey. Whatever happens during the journey, provide material for post-tour narratives, which after a period of time, may change the pre-tour stories altogether.

As a traveller you interact with your environment through all of your senses. Sensory modalities are symbolically structured. They are mediated and go far beyond the mere textual. The larger pre-tour narratives are nowadays for a large part construed through visuals, through the use of social media and internet.

A highly superficial way of doing ones pre-tour research but unavoidable. Also the pre-tour planning is a narrative structure, as people tell peers through social media, exactly in which stage of planning they are.

The master narrative

The object of a photograph on the web, is less that of the narrative or actual biographical or ethnological depiction of the main subject, but a visual that was already predestined to provide commercial imagery for the tourist sector, before it was even taken! When it no longer resides within the personal and private domain of the owner or depicted subject, it has no biographical meaning or relationship to its’ context, in whichever country the photo was taken. For the regular tourist, the photograph meets the expectations he has from the destination in very broad and commodified terms. Photographs offer a point of departure (Barthes, 1984): a pregnant surface from which narratives can be launched, a fertile social soil for memories, identities, daydreams to grow on. (Noy, 2014)

Imagery

The actual time and occasion of taking the photographs are for the larger part staged and framed, both by the tourist industry and by the tourists themselves. The circulation of the imagery is very much NOT coincidental! The way Europeans look at the third world, is still very colonial. Not withstanding recognition of equality and fairness, the view of the third world is still very much of a grown civilisation, based on big 19th century constructed narratives. Mind you, this says nothing about looking down upon them. The big narratives of the 19th century grew within us, but not neccesarily within the same direction as the actual country in question. These established master narratives are of huge significance and influence. They make meaning, shape action and movement, the form tourist behaviour and direct the infrastructure for foreigners. They are therefore stories of power, aswell as meaning.

The master narrative is a perceptual framework that works as a filter which includes as much as it excludes (Bruner, 2005).

Backpackers are usually somewhat quieter when preparing for the journey. The usage of social media by backpackers, is significantly lower than that of the emerging flashpacker. Figures from 2014 indicated 26% of backpackers and 41% for flashpackers (G. Richards).

On a personal note, I wonder if the quest for “otherness” by backpackers- who are more reflective and internal in orientation -creates affordance for both a lower degree of social media use and more methodological and less visual pre-tour planning?

Backpackers often start their journey alone or as a couple. They frequently end up travelling in a small group. When on the road, the sources of information vary greatly by mode of travel. In groups, local guides and agents are the primary storytellers, with additional material by standard guidebooks. Backpackers use hostels or sites along the route as an additional primary source of information.

An experience- as it happens -is much more laden with rich sensations than any story could begin to approach. An experience turns into a narrative, as soon as you say to yourself what is happening on tour. When transforming a sensory occurrence into a plot structure.

” From the point of view of the experiencing self, the journey consists of a series of sensations, but from the point of view of the remembering self, it becomes a narrative, and a severe selection from reality (Kahneman 2005). “

However, the routes create their own sources for information- outside the tourist-industry – as can be read in the blog on volunteering abroad.

Volunteers and the knowledge created through volunteer-travel and religious travel, supply important modes of information and narration, like well informed non-professional guides, offering services. Some of them are skilled, other less so.

Most of the ones I have listened to over the years want to be entertaining as well as educational, but most do not have an anthropological understanding of culture but rather present unrelated snippets of information, or interesting random stories about the people or locality. Bruner; 2005

Recovering poor service on the workfloor

As could be read in earlier blogs, even if you are a small hostel, a familiy-run bed and breakfast, a low-budget accommodation: It is inexcusable not to think thoroughly about the services you provide. Simply NOT doing something, does not constitute a service! Nor does leaving things out, because it is your hostels policy not to provide too much guest-services for not being economical or simply too much work for the staff you have or don’t have.

Loyalty

Your guest really is perceptive enough to see the contours of the `deal’ that he is presented with. Chances are he was already familiar with it, before he even came to the hostel. That is- however -not the same as guest loyalty. He is simply providing behaviour that ties in with his side of the bargain! As written in earlier blogs, low prices are not the only thing the backpacker chooses your hostel for. The matter of ambiance is hugely improtant (see the post on creativity). Not only does a creative ambiance give the guest a good feeling on a personal level, it also creates a space for him, in which to interact with others, causing him to use the interaction with fellow-guests and space, as an interface for social interactions.

Service provided by guests

Many hostels employ volunteering travellers and backpackers as their staff. See also the post on volunteering abroad. It is important to give your volunteering traveller a good deal aswell, always making sure you remain on the giving side of the deal. It is perfectly acceptable to ask your volunteer to maintain certain standards and behaviours in handling guests. Instructing them, providing scripts, making sure they read a servicedesign manual you might have created. But make sure you discuss these things before they arrive. Furhermore, motivate them beforehand to apply if they have the personality traits ands skills you require of them, to communicate your servicelevel with. But again, make sure you remain on the giving side of the deal.

Contrary to popular belief, the loyalty of your guest can still be maintained and be put to good use, if they are happy with your service recovery effort. If something goes wrong, make sure you correct it and use the dimensions:

Competence

Excitement

Sincerity

Sophistication and

Ruggedness.

In short, make sure there is room for your guest to experience empathy for you and your efforts. When you have recovered their satisfaction, make sure the guest experiences this in a full recovery of the expected services, including all dimensions- tangible and intangible.

Loyal guests usually attribute errors to unstable factors, over which the supplier has little control. In the case of volunteering staff, guests are more likely to accept service-recovery, but it is important to understand that volunteers are often part of the group, with little to no distance to the guests, and therefore likely to choose the side of the peer-group rather than playing the role of experienced hostel manager. And who can blame them? Ashforth and Mael (1989) found that social identification lead persons to perform activities that are congruent with their identity and support institutions that embody that identity. So the volunteer-employee might be just the person to handle these things. If handles correctly, they will identify with the hotel organisation.

Guest behaviour after service-recovery, is much more likely to be a guest-citisen- also known as customer voluntary performance, varying in behaviour from using less towels as to have less costs for the hostel, to helping out during breakfast and giving advice to other guests.

So the production of your service is very much a joint effort with volunteers, paid staff and ofcourse your guests, which includes a good briefing of volunteers before they arrive.

Changing travellers and work

Whether be it from loving to travel. doing things for others, having a cheap alternative to travel and stay in another country, having something to do for the summer or fleeing from everyday life and home… All people working as volunteers abroad, have their own reasons for doing so.

Usually, it is a combination of backpacking, wanting to do something for others and sheer opportunism. A combination of both being there for others, and by doing so, implying an reasonable reciprical action. This works usually through social travel and social accommodation. Much like Couchsurfing and houseswapping, the need for symmetrical swapping or exchange, does not apply when bound by certain common qualities. Contact through a community, trust, mutual interests and being endorsed by others, are commonly seen as deciding factors for housing someone, either on their sofa or as guest with more freedom in movement and stay.

Volunteers, working abroad, are usually not familiar with the term volunteer-tourism and don’t like to be called `tourist’, which indicates- similar to backpackers -volunteering abroad is still seen as (partially) idealogical in nature. Baring in mind ofcourse, the idealogical traits can be interpreted as being “social currency” for travel and staying abroad.

Motives

On the subject of motives for volunteering abroad, there are numerous studies and theories to be addressed. In a study by Tomazos & Butler (The Volunteer Tourist as ‘Hero’; 2010), participants explained their engagement in a programme in different ways:

a wish to get away from the everyday routine at the permanent place of residence,

a fondness for travel.

a wish to repay one’s life of privilege and the need to give help to those who are poor and whose poverty is no fault of their own.

growing distrust of all kinds of charity organisations which bring help to victims and collect funds in developed countries.

As the backpacking community changes, so do the parties that provide in voluntary work, that work on a voluntary basis and exceedingly so: the go-between party. Often providing extra services that require payment and registration and work along reciprocal routes that have less bearing on peoples willingness to exchange things without currency, in a symmetric way. When such parties require payment, they can no longer rely on the willingness of travellers, to be as open as they were before. They become “customers” instead of traveller or volunteer, providing and demanding different qualities altogether. People volunteering abroad, increasingly use more bi-directional reciprocity to get where they want to be, meaning that an exchange is made based upon more or less the same value: work for accommodation and food and drink. One example I can mention is the new startup Amons.

The way people make use of working abroad as volunteer is highly bound by cultural differences in leisure-experience, the experience of time, global routines and seasonality. American students for instance, will have a summer break for a specific duration. Having a gap-year has more flexible time boundaries and often involve a combination of paid and voluntary work.

You walk the voluntary walk of a pilgrim

Volunteering is specifically popular in Europe. This has a very interesting bit of background. Doing volunteering is related to pilgrimage and religious travel. Although obviously many other factors are important, volunteer-tourism is often been associated with being interested in other cultures; wanting to get to know them better. The length of stay is quite long. Many tourism volunteer projects are also based on the conservation or restauration of heritage. The cultural routes have a strong potential link to volunteer tourism through heritage and through the desire to have intensive experiences with local people. (Greg Richards, 2011)

Poland

In Poland there is a high rise in movement-possibilities, due to emergent new ways of very cheap travel like Polskibus, covering long distances for a very low price. Polish people themselves are as yet less familiar with the concept of Couchsurfing and social travel and are quite pragmatic in their use of transportation and covering large distances, putting an emphasis on the act of arriving, rather than the travel itself. In the past 3 years, the use of and familiarity with social travel and accommodation has increased greatly in Poland.

This brings me to the ideological aspect of social travel within Poland. As much of voluntary work in Poland is regulated through Non Governmental Organisations with quite good and large networks, the possibilities for cultural exchange are huge and rhich in meaning. They provide excellent opportunities for artists applying for grants for cultural exchange programmes and for volunteers abroad, to engage in more spatial experiences, not particular to one single space or place of work. A very good example on a cultural low-threshhold scale, is the work of Kinderzirkus Wanjanini in Germany, with affiliated organisations.

Scholarly travel

Researchers also find an increase in scholarship schemes, to provide Polish young people to travel, work, stay and study. The two largest programs now, are Erasmus and CEEPUS, covering most of Europe. (Joanna Kowalczyk-Anioł)

In commercial tourism, research is often directed towards conversion, to understand motivation just enough to earn money.

In my personal opinion, the tourist geography of both backpacker and volunteer-tourist, should be seen as an organic entity, bound by structures that rise above and flee from the commodified nature of spatial and experiential structure of the everyday world. Don’t forget, travel is an act of cultural production, of meaning making and placemaking along a network of incorporated symbolic boundaries.

Volunteer at Angloville (Poland)

Polskibus routes

Music-travel and opportunities

Working abroad as an artist or busker? There is an increasingly larger amount of academic funding you can apply for, for working and work-exchange on an academic level.

There are numerous reasons why art in general and street theatre and busking, are important in everyday life. Music travels through time and space through a number of modalities, most of which are nowadays considered to have “un-natural” rhythms, in the sense that we are so much attuned and formed by the commercialisation of both music and rhythm that it is hard to concentrate on, and be influenced by sounds that matter for wayfinding, for instance.

Ofcourse, music transforms particular places into tourist hotspots. If you’ve been to Rynek square in Krakow, you know how throughout the day, the square is filled with music. The place is filled with sound and the sound of a place, enters the consciousness of the tourist and becomes part of the experience of the place.

Volunteering in Tjechia: Defining volunteerism in the Czech Republic is problematic, because the totalitarian communist regime (1948-1989) devalued volunteerism and turned voluntary work into obligatory socialistic collectivism

Thoughts on time and perception

Creativity in hostels is not just important for your guest-experience, it also enhances the quality of life in general. Literature has moved away from objective indicators of quality of life, into the understanding that subjectivity plays a larger role, connected to place, context and perception of time and time-related experiences. Quality of life is connected to leisure wellbeing, depending on factors such as :

Arousal;

Intrinsic satisfaction;

Involvement;

Mastery;

Perceived freedom and

Spontaneity

(Unger and Kernan, 1983)

In eventing for your guests in or from your hostel, make sure their time-perception is different from the commodified urban rhythms most guests are already acustomed to.

Rhythm and spaces

Nighttime should not be the mere opposite of daytime-rhythms. Remember to emphasise local big events, as they hold an important ritual meaning, important for the guest to construct their experiences with. Events as ritual, are bounded and seperated from everyday life.

Events can create ‘small spaces’ (Friedman, 1999), in which the time-experience is enclosed and can be marked and beautified by you as an event-maker. By length and nature and intensity of their qualities (Sorokin, Merton)

The events you organise and present, can create a sense of collective emotional entrainment (Collins), by introducing them to shared rhythms, marked by `zeitgebers’, like the gathering on a square at local big events, in which the guests’ participation within collectiveness is marked by larger markings, like a pre-party in your hostel, a fancy dress or themed gathering.

As signals, they lead to interaction and shared behaviour. The experience and experience of time can be constructed by entrainment and a shared sense of ritual factors, but in this case it can be externally constructed through ‘micro-temporal coordination’, making sure the conditions for entrainment are present: physical density and barriers to outside involvement (Collins; 2004)

How creative are you? And your staff?

Hostel guests are primed for gaining new experiences. They have to be actively approached by the hostel staff. Creativity is a very important trait to have for them.

Contrary to cheap and affordable hotels, hostel customers usually seek for a bit more than just a low price. They also want social interaction. Due to the communal character of the hostelpopulation on location, it is easier to control the social situations There is a desire to meet and socialise, with other travelers and with the locals.

Hostels’ customers have usually travelled themselves, have been in other hostels aswell and are familiar with them. They themselves form creativity by their active participation in hostel events. Guests without the urge to communicate that much in hostels but are mostly in search of cheap accommodation, may not engage in efforts to get them participating. This can have a direct effect on the internal use of space and group-agility.

The key element for hostel is ambience.

Your role is everything

Role 1: hostel owner aiming at profits without taking efforts to create a specific marketing environment. Remember, the low cost of stay, is not the defining trait for guests to come and stay at a hostel, you have to provide additional services.

Role 2: The caring and participating hostel owner. They care about ambiance. Many hostel owners have travelled extensively themselves before opening a hostel. They are more familiar with other hostel culture and other travelers. The caring hostel owner is an active participant in creation and is able to weave this into the daily running and operations of his hostel.

So what if you’re in a bad mood? Or your staff is hungover? Being creative and affording to meet your guests, cannot be left to mere chance or spur of the moment. It needs to be an integral part of your servicedesign. This means you have to think it through and know what you’re talking about. It does NOT mean (I can hear you think it… 😉 ) it is veigned and masked performance. Creativity is both spatial and eventual in charactre. Creativity in hospitality includes approaches to space organisation and an active role on your part to build interactions in behavioural and in the marketing environment.

Interwoven wit custumer experience management. Does that mean it’s all rather fakey? Absolutely not. As long as you’re sinsere and know what you’re doing, where you’re doing it and why.

If it is a family run hostel, it has the capacity of being the most welcoming place possible. However, beware of the wear and tear! Showing routine behaviour to your guests is a killer!

Most hostels do not give a lot of comfort in their design and organisation of space. This is compensated by other traits. The use of themed design or familiar decorations, gives an extra affordance to the internal space of the building. It gives guests an extra- albeit conceptual -livingspace, in which they are invited to move around in and make use of.

Becoming strangely aquainted

There are numerous ways of ensuring your guest have a good time. One of the mistakes you could make, is to try and standardise staff-behaviour too much.
Travel is by all means a sense-making process. Travelers construct te touristic experiences by learning, understanding and feeling the places they have visited.

How strange or astranging is arriving in a hostel full of other cultural influences? Travelers construct a touristic experience by getting to know the places they visit, through interaction, understanding and sensing the embedded culture of a place.

The places they visit and cultures they encounter and experience, are connected to them by “stakeholders”, such as tourists, the government, original inhabitants and minority groups. The touristic experience is mediated through representation by stakeholders or by their being part of the tourism context. Backpackers themselves are certainly stakeholders in the sense that they meet eachother regularly and word of mouth is a big source of information for them.

Check-in

The length oIf the service-encounter at the check-in area can define the service quality in a negative way, if the service is not mediated in a proper way. Short check-in moments can actually be perceived as loose and easy in a nice manner. But not every type of information can be conveyed in that period of time, without giving off all the wrong signals. A longer check- in moment can be really irritating if the check- in desk is too high and there is nowhere for the guest to sit down. It creates a distance between the staffmember and the guest that is hard to correct later. If the check-in moment is short, be careful you only give out information that has a high service level. In Little Havana hostel in Krakow for instance. you were given a long waifer sheet for you to sign with all the restrictions the hostel wants to impose. It would have been better to bring some towels to the room with the waifer discretely tucked away in an envelope.

For backpackers and long time travellers especially, the actual proces of checking in at the desk is not a hugely significant event. However you must realise that the actual act of arriving and leaving at a venue, still holdsa large ritual value. The act of distancing oneself from newly befriended people and the actual physical shift in location when they left home to travel, has been compared to a rite of passage. The mediated environment of homeness in a hostel, can act as a new ‘fire-up’ for the rest of the travel. It is therefore important to make sure their departure is not only noticed but noticebly marked at check-out.

The eventmaker in your hostel can be a powerful mediator, in the right context. They link the tourist to the surrounding strangeness and translates the strangeness into a cultural idiom, that becomes shared and familiar to the visitors. Make sure you give your guests the opportunity to explore. Prefably experiences that are local and experienced through the eyes of the guests.

A tourismexperience contains primary and secondary products and services. Although some may be seen as more significant than others, without te smaller or supporting experiences, the peak experience does not happen. If it ails in the supporting experiences, the main or key experience is in danger, no matter how strong the peak experience is.

It is neccesary to identify also the daily routine experiences, experienced by the guest. As guests are continually informed by the world around them, throughout the day he will be continually fed information and new impressions on your hostel; through the media, through other guests and travelers, through leaflets and pictures. It is not possible to deliver a continuous produced “flow”.

Definitioner

The importance of staging a tourism experience

Backlund, Jonas; 2014 All rights reserved
http://theseus32-kk.lib.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/84698/thesis2014.pdf?sequence=1
http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2014121019249
The aim of this study was to show the importance of staging an experience in the tourism industry. Furthermore, it examined what a beverage experience is and what needs to be taken into consideration when one of these experiences is created

The importance of staging a tourism experience

Backlund, Jonas; 2014 All rights reserved
http://theseus32-kk.lib.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/84698/thesis2014.pdf?sequence=1
http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2014121019249
The aim of this study was to show the importance of staging an experience in the tourism industry. Furthermore, it examined what a beverage experience is and what needs to be taken into consideration when one of these experiences is created

The mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.
Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the positive psychology concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields.
According to Csíkszentmihályi, flow is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning. In flow, the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand. To be caught in the ennui of depression or the agitation of anxiety is to be barred from flow. The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task although flow is also described as a deep focus on nothing but the activity – not even oneself or one's emotions.

Event

Evenement. An occurrence at a given place and time; a special set of circumstances; a noteworthy occurrence. (Getz 2007:18)

(Events are )special times and spaces in which specific rituals or practices can be developed and maintained. These practices are designed to meet particular objectives (such as building social cohesion or stimulating economic impact or image change) related to individual events or to the places and communities in which they take place. (Greg Richards)

Events can (...) become a means of changing social structures and creating new realities.